Management and Organisation Development: Beyond Arrows, Boxes and Circles

Citation

Mumford, A. (2002), "Management and Organisation Development: Beyond Arrows, Boxes and Circles", Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 23 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/lodj.2002.02223aae.001

Management and Organisation Development: Beyond Arrows, Boxes and Circles

Keith PatchingPalgrave (Macmillan)London1999416 pp.ISBN: 033375414X (paperback)£25.99

Keywords: Management, Organizational development, Training, Organizational learning

Patching draws on his experience at the Cranfield School of Management to create a book which offers a lot of specific detail about particular programmes. He takes us through a 15-step framework used at the school in partnership with clients to establish whether a formal management development programme is desirable and if so how it should be set up. The steps represent admirable and intensive analysis and different kinds of intervention. The amount of work involved is considerable, and I wondered as a consultant myself how often Patching and his colleagues persuade clients to pay for it – or whether some elements are not charged directly.

There are good illustrations of each of the steps, and some sensible propositions such as the need to develop a shared language about desired results to be achieved through the programme. Perhaps one of the most arguable propositions is his opposition to the idea of a training needs analysis. He claims that Cranfield works from a "clean sheet" and that they use shadowing and unstructured conversation, with focus groups and questionnaires and interviews as supporting elements. Again this struck me as an excellent approach – which obviously means I have used it myself – but one which requires a level of financial and time commitment from clients, which not all of them are willing to provide.

Patching is opposed to the idea of definitions, which he regards as restricting understanding rather than enhancing it, so there are no definitions of learning. However, on management development in two separate chapters he first offers a definition and then says that he has not done so – one might have hoped an editor would have picked up this inconsistency. His reason for not defining learning is that he says that since it is socially constructed it is impossible to establish a single statement of individual learning. His argument here is thin to non-existent, since his examples really just show that people have learned different things rather than there is no definition of learning, which would apply to the process as a whole. Again perhaps inconsistently, he offers a negative definition "learning cannot be said to have taken place until the manager changes behaviour at work." This is much too restricted a definition – clearly a manager, or indeed anyone else, may learn things which do not involve changes of behaviour. I think here Patching has been seduced by the desirability of much management learning being more clearly associated with subsequent performance – a point on which I would certainly agree. He is positively opposed to the idea of the learning cycle, which he believes can become a self fulfilling prophecy cycle. Nor is he a great enthusiast for learning styles except as a reminder to the designer – whereas Honey and myself see it crucially as being a huge aid to the learner directly. He prefers the Myers Briggs type indicator as a "deeper and more pertinent picture on the managers we work with". My own view of course is that it is much more effective to have an instrument which focuses specifically on learning, if it is learning that you want to discuss. In the same way I would support arguments for instruments which look specifically at decision making or negotiating skills.

The good features of this book include the case illustrations and the different types of intervention made by Patching and his colleagues. I like the 15-step framework and his willingness to reveal some the mistakes they have made in developing and using it. The less satisfactory aspects are that while it is entirely proper to use his experience at Cranfield, the books seems to have larger ambitions, which perhaps would have been assisted if there was some comparative material. It is centred entirely on off the job activities – again in contrast to the title. Nor is there anything on how different methods might be selected for different purposes. This would be an especially significant issue for the kind of management development which he is advocating.

Alan Mumford